Fish hearing vs. Darwin.

 Study Unravels the Mystery of Fish Hearing

Eric Cassell

A newly published study in the journal Nature concerning fish hearing has apparently unraveled the mechanism for how they determine the direction of sound.1 For a long time it was believed that fish did not possess any sense of hearing. One reason was because they do not have external ears. That ignored the fact that hearing is accomplished by the inner ear in most animals. It was Nobel Prize-winner Karl von Frisch who conducted experiments in the 1930s that proved fish can hear sounds. Since then, it has been known that fish can determine the direction of sounds. Yet an explanation of how this is accomplished has been elusive. 

Human Hearing

It is instructive first to understand how humans and other vertebrate animals determine the direction of sound. Humans use the time difference between the arrival of sound waves at the two ears. This is called the interaural time difference (ITD). Humans can discern the horizontal direction to within 2 degrees, which translates to a time difference of 11 microseconds.2 That means human brains have an extremely well-designed neural network to achieve that level of performance. One theory is that there is a network of neurons that “use axons as delay lines and to measure small time differences precisely.”3 In addition, vertebrates detect the differences in sound wave pressure between the ears, which is also an aid in determining direction.

Challenge of Sound Detection Underwater

Detecting and processing sound underwater presents more problems than in the air. One is that the speed of sound is approximately five times faster in water than in air. That means that the ITD is significantly shorter, which makes it more challenging to measure the difference in the arrival time between two receptors in an animal. The detected pressure differences are also smaller underwater. In addition, sound pressure in water has no directional component. Due to these and other technical problems the prevailing models indicated that it should not be possible for fish to determine the direction of a source of sound. 

Evidence of Fish Detection of Sound Direction

There is a large body of experimental evidence showing that fish can determine the direction of sound. Directional hearing is essential to a number of fish behaviors, including finding prey, avoiding predators, and locating mates. The ability to move in the direction of the source of sound is called phonotaxis. One example in fish is that the females of some species will seek the mating call of males. That includes the ability to distinguish different species, as fish bioacoustics scientists Anthony Hawkins and Arthur Popper explain, “Behavioral studies of sound communication have indicated that fish discriminate between calls on the basis of differences in repetition rate and duration, rather than frequency or bandwidth.”4 It should not be surprising that fish have very good hearing capabilities because as Jonathan Balcombe, author of What a Fish Knows, writes, “Despite the common assumption that fishes are silent, they actually have more ways of producing sounds than any other group of vertebrate animals…Fishes produce a veritable symphony of sounds…So notable are the sounds of some fishes that we have named the fishes accordingly: grunts, drums, trumpeters, croakers, sea robins, and grunters.”5

Experiments were conducted in which Atlantic cod and haddock were conditioned to respond to a pulsed tone from loudspeakers at different horizontal angles. The results showed that the fish readily detected the difference when the loudspeakers were separated by 20 degrees or more.6 Hawkins and Popper also state that the experiments “demonstrated that the cod is well able to discriminate between separate sound sources in 3D space.”7 There is evidence in mammals for a correlation between the field of vision and the ability to determine the direction of sound.8 In other words, the narrower the field of vision the more accurate the sound localization that appears to be required. In the case of fish, since they typically have a very wide field of vision, their localization of sound probably does not need to be that accurate. Hence, as was found in the described experiment, localization within about 20 degrees is likely sufficient. The fact that fish have the ability to determine the direction of sound and employ it in numerous behaviors made it all the more confounding why scientists had been unable to determine the mechanism.

One important characteristic of fish that does help sound detection is that they are acoustically transparent. This characteristic is useful because, in addition to pressure, the transmission of sound in any medium occurs through the oscillation of pressure and motion. In addition to the oscillatory change of the pressure wave, underwater sound also consists of a to-and-fro motion of particles in the direction of transmission. This phenomenon is called particle motion which “can be measured in terms of displacement, velocity, or acceleration, (and) differs from the sound pressure in that it is inherently directional, and all the motion parameters are vector quantities.”9 It turns out that this phenomenon of sound transmission in water is crucial as, “This mechanism for the direct detection of particle motion by the otolith organs is found in all fishes.”10Detection of this motion isn’t trivial since, “The to-and-fro displacements of the very small body of water are of the order of nanometers.”11 At first it might seem simple to determine direction based on particle motion since the motion is directly in line with the propagation of the sound wave. The problem, however, is that because the motion is back-and-forth, there is an ambiguity of 180 degrees in the direction.

The Experiment

For the experiment documented in the Nature paper the researchers tested hearing capability in Danionella cerebrum, one of the smallest teleost (bony) fish. An additional problem for hearing in small fish is that the distance between the inner ears is relatively short. In the case of D. cerebrum it is only about 0.6 millimeters, which is several orders of magnitude smaller than the wavelength of sound (approximately 150 millimeters). That makes it difficult to measure the phase of the detected pressure wave. The experiment was able to simulate and control a number of variables associated with sound (notably pressure and motion) and observed how the fish reacted. In addition, during the experiment a laser scanning microscope was used to examine the fish hearing auditory structures. This enabled the researchers to compare the reaction of the auditory structures with the various models.

Directional Hearing Mechanism

The study evaluated several different theories and models of potential mechanisms for determining direction. After the researchers compared the experimental results with the models, the evidence provided the most validation for one model, originally proposed by zoologist Arie Schuijf in 1975. The Schuijf model is based on the comparison of pressure and particle motion. Fish are able to detect the motion of pressure and particle motion separately, using individual detectors. The detection of pressure occurs in the swim bladder as, “All known sound pressure sensors in fish are based on compressible gas-filled organs.”12 The swim bladder is the organ used by bony fish to control their buoyancy. Particle motion can be detected because, being acoustically transparent, tissue in the fish is coupled to the motion of the water as it moves through the fish. The two measurements can then be compared and used to estimate the incoming direction of sound. The reason this is possible is because the pressure and particle motion are out of phase. When pressure is highest the particle motion is away from the source. When pressure is lowest the particle motion is toward the source.

As described by the authors of the paper, this physical characteristic of underwater acoustics provides the basis for the directional hearing algorithm. There is a neural mechanism that uses these two sensory inputs to estimate the direction that the sound is coming from. In addition to highly sensitive sensors it must also include an accurate internal clock to determine when the two inputs are to be compared. The fish directional hearing algorithm appears to be another example of a complex programmed behavior in animals.13 However, as indicated in a related Nature article, “We do not yet know what happens in the brain and how it interprets information from the inner ear about the phase and amplitude of sounds.”14

Some experiments also appear to indicate that fishes can estimate distance based on the information provided by pressure and particle motion sensors. The ability to estimate the distance of the source of sound is a hearing capability not possessed by humans. Some species of fish can detect ultrasound up to frequencies of 180,000 Hertz.15 Human hearing capability is typically up to 20,000 Hertz. Very impressive capabilities for animals that scientists once thought had no hearing ability at all!

Notes

Veith, et al., “The mechanism for directional hearing in fish,” Nature, Vol. 631, 4 July 2024, 118-23.

Mark F. Bear, Barry W. Connors, Michael A. Paradiso, Neuroscience (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007), 369.

Bear, et al., Neuroscience, 370.

Anthony D. Hawkins, Arthur N. Popper, “Directional hearing and sound source localization by fishes,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 144, 3329-3350, December 14, 2018.

Jonathan Balcombe. What a Fish Knows (New York: Scientific American, 2016), 40-41.

Hawkins and Popper, “Directional hearing and sound source localization by fishes.”

Hawkins and Popper, “Directional hearing and sound source localization by fishes.”

Henry E. Heffner, Rickye S. Heffner, “The evolution of mammalian hearing,” AIP Conf. Proc. 1965, 130001, May 31, 2018.

Popper, et al., “Examining the Hearing Abilities of Fishes,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 146, 948–955 (2019).

Popper and Hawkins, “The importance of particle motion to fishes and invertebrates.”

Arthur N. Popper, Anthony D. Hawkins, “The importance of particle motion to fishes and invertebrates,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 143, 470-488, January 29, 2018.

Veith, et al., “The mechanism for directional hearing in fish,” 123.

Eric Cassell, Animal Algorithms (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2021).

Catherine E. Carr, “How fish sense the direction of sound,” Nature, Vol. 631, 4 July 2024, 29.

Friedrich Ladich and Tanja Schulz-Mirbach, “Diversity in Fish Auditory Systems: One of the Riddles of Sensory Biology,” Front. Ecol. Evol. 4:28, 31 March 2016.

Against nincsnevem ad pluribus XX.

 Nincs:Mary and the Second Eve

The argument that Mary would have recognized Jesus as the Second Adam if she were truly the Second Eve misunderstands both the role of typology and Mary’s faith journey. Mary’s understanding of her Son’s mission grew over time, just as the apostles’ understanding of Jesus' messianic role developed gradually. Her initial responses, including her participation in the purification rite and her concern for Jesus' well-being, reflect her humanity and deep maternal love, not a lack of understanding of Jesus' identity.

Moreover, being the Second Eve does not imply immediate and complete knowledge of all theological implications. It indicates Mary’s unique role in salvation history as the one who, through her obedience, reversed the disobedience of Eve. Mary’s sinlessness is rooted in her unique role in God’s plan of salvation, which is why the Church venerates her as the sinless Mother of God.

Failure to acknowledge JEHOVAH'S Prophet is a sin.

John ch.8:24NIV"I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”

John ch 15:24NIV"If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father."

Mary obviously repented of her lapse into faithlessness but that is different from claiming that she was born like Eve free from inherited sin.

By way of a reminder 

Mark ch.3:21NIV"When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

Verse 33 indicates that Jesus Mother was numbered among those not heeding the meaning of the many powerful signs JEHOVAH Was performing through Him for a time,this would have been something she would need to repent of and seek forgiveness for which she evidently did,

Against nincsnevem ad pluribus XIX

Nincs: Jesus’ Words About His Family (Matthew 12:49-50)

The passage where Jesus speaks about His disciples as His mother and brothers is often misunderstood. Jesus is not rejecting or diminishing Mary’s role; rather, He is expanding the concept of family to include all who do the will of God. This does not contradict the veneration of Mary but highlights that spiritual kinship is based on obedience to God. Mary, as the first and most perfect disciple of Jesus, who fully did the will of God, is the ultimate model of this spiritual family. Far from being an "odd" thing to say, Jesus’ words emphasize the importance of spiritual relationships in the Kingdom of 

Me:Again what I Said was that if Jesus wanted his mother to be venerated as the only other sinless woman who ever lived Besides Eve and coredemptrix and queen of heaven, this statement putting her on the the same level as any other sinful believer seems odd the Bible makes Jesus separation from sinners and his roles as the perfect priest and prophet quite clear .

Matthew ch 12:48-50NKJV"But He answered and said to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” 49And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! 50For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother"

Not only that after his glorification he made no declarations through her at all preferring to use sinful men as teachers when he had a perfect sinless woman in their midst quite puzzling.

Against nincsnevem ad pluribus XVIII

 Nincs:The Law and Inherited Sin

The claim that the law only applies to those with inherited sin and thus would not apply to Mary if she were sinless misunderstands the nature of the Mosaic Law. The law was a comprehensive system that applied to all Israelites, regardless of individual sinfulness. Jesus Himself, who was without sin, was circumcised (Luke 2:21) and participated in other rites prescribed by the law. His submission to the law was not an indication of sin but a demonstration of obedience to God's commandments. Similarly, Mary's participation in the purification rite (Luke 2:22-24) was an act of obedience and humility, not an indication of sin.

Me:as tends to be the case I have to give my actual position in lieu of Mr.nevem's strawman,what I Said was that sin offerings would only apply to those conscious of sins, offerings made for the sins of the nation as a whole would be one thing but the law is clear a personal sin offering would only be made by one who has committed sins,this can be seen by the fact that confession of ones sins were involved in the ritual.

See leviticus 5

Moreover, the law’s purpose was not solely to address personal sin but to regulate the covenantal relationship between God and His people. Mary, being fully Jewish and living under the Mosaic Law, would naturally observe its requirements, even if she was preserved from original sin. This does not negate her sinlessness but shows her faithful adherence to the la

Me:The offering of whole burnt offerings would not be necessary for someone who is not conscious of sin under the law if a person kept the moral requirements of the law no sin offering would be necessary from such a person the constant offering whole burnt offerings demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the law that is why Christ could say something greater than the temple is here,

Hebrews ch.9:12NIV"He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption."

Against nincsnevem ad pluribus XVII.

 

Nincs:Your argument appears to misunderstand both the nature of God’s foreknowledge and the theological position held by many Christian traditions regarding free will and predestination.

Me:My argument is that if God has foreknown the infinite future exhaustively From the infinite past the only LOGICAL conclusion is that the infinite future has been foredetermined from the infinite past, and that if JEHOVAH is the true first and sole cause of this exhaustively foredetermined universal creation it is he who has either actively or passively exhaustively foredetermined the future, so before JEHOVAH Creates the unrepentant murderer he knows from the infinite past that he will murder unrepentantly, of course this event is foredetermined nothing else but this can happen. but the only way it can happen is if JEHOVAH CHOOSES to give the remorseless murderer a body and a mind and access to the weapons and knowledge the remorseless murderer would need to commit his crime . JEHOVAH Can choose to deny the remorseless murderer what he needs to commit his crime, he chose otherwise.

Either JEHOVAH is incapable of creating our hypothetical remorseless murderer in a way that gives him a genuine moral choice . Or he can create him with a genuine choice re: his moral development and chose not to. So this is about basic logic . As you will see Mr.nincsnevem responds in typical fashion not by demonstrating any inconsistency in my logic but by parotting the party line in his typically circular style of argumentation. 

Nincs:Firstly, it’s important to clarify that God’s foreknowledge and human foreknowledge are indeed different, but this does not negate the possibility of God knowing the future without determining it. Christian theology traditionally teaches that God, being outside of time, sees all events—past, present, and future—simultaneously. This does not mean that God determines every action that will occur; rather, it means that God knows the choices that free creatures will make. God’s knowledge is comprehensive and perfect, but it does not override or negate human free will.

Me : JEHOVAH is the first and most consequential cause of all events in the creation he is no mere passive observer of the future he creates the future actively or passively,any event JEHOVAH Foreknows he has the power to actively or passively alter,so he can foreknow several outcomes to the same chain of events, the example of the sun's rising in the east was made JEHOVAH Can easily arrange to have the sun rise in the west or any other direction or not at all habakkuk ch.3:11,

To argue then that JEHOVAH Does not have the might and wisdom to make certain aspects of the future undetermined or to alter his own previous determinations of said future is to misunderstand the scriptures true position re:JEHOVAH'S Sovereignty over his creation.

Amos ch.7:1-6NIV"This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king’s share had been harvested and just as the late crops were coming up. 2When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, “Sovereign LORD, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”

3So the LORD relented.

“This will not happen,” the LORD said.

4This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: The Sovereign LORD s calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. 5Then I cried out, “Sovereign LORD, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”

6So the LORD relented.

“This will not happen either,” the Sovereign LORD said..

4This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: The Sovereign LORD was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. 5Then I cried out, “Sovereign LORD, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”

6So the LORD relented.

“This will not happen either,” the Sovereign LORD said."

JEHOVAH as the source of all the energy and information in the creation causes the future not an exhaustively predetermined future but he uses his Sovereign power to safeguard our freewill

Nincs:You mention that because the future is not fully foredetermined, it cannot be precisely foreknown. However, this claim assumes that for something to be known, it must be determined. This is not the case, especially when considering the nature of God. God's knowledge is not contingent on causality in the way human knowledge is. God’s knowledge is complete and eternal, meaning that He knows the outcomes of all free decisions without needing to cause them. This understanding preserves both the sovereignty of God and the genuine freedom of human beings.

Me:It's basic logic every contingent event/occurrence has a chain of causes that precedes it JEHOVAH Being the first cause and the source of all the information an energy in the creation. So if an outcome is inevitable the chain of causes leading up to it logically has already begun . If it was inevitable from prior to the creation then the creator himself must be included in that chain of causes he being the first cause, and bearing in mind he has the power to alter outcomes,

The only way to preserve human freedom is for morally consequential outcomes to not be inevitable from eternity,

Nincs:Regarding your assertion that Christendom posits an "apology for free will" that is "really no free will at all," this seems to be a misunderstanding of what Christian theologians, especially within Catholic and many Protestant traditions, actually teach. The doctrine of predestination, as understood in these traditions, does not imply absolute determinism. For example, the Catholic Church teaches that God predestines no one to damnation and that human beings are fully capable of making free choices that have real moral significance. The Council of Trent, for example, affirmed the reality of human free will while also upholding the necessity of divine grace.

A vain attempt to reconcile what is logically irreconcilable if an outcome is inevitable prior to my existence ,logically I have no choice, the chain of causes that rendered the outcome inevitable preceded my existence JEHOVAH would have chosen to not mitigate the chain of causes that made the outcome inevitable and thus would be culpable as the first cause in my failure.

Nincs:Your critique of "absolute predeterminism" as absurd is addressing a straw man rather than the actual beliefs of most Christian traditions. Absolute predeterminism, where all events are caused by God in a way that negates human freedom, is not a position held by mainstream Christianity. Instead, what is often taught is that God's foreknowledge includes a divine plan where human freedom plays a real and vital role. This is not absurdity but a sophisticated understanding of how divine omniscience and human freedom coexist.

Me: it is your lack of rationality that is the problem whatever outcomes that JEHOVAH foreknows are inevitable every outcome has a chain of causes preceding it if an outcome is inevitable the chain of causes leading up to it has already begun that is just the way causality and contingency works. JEHOVAH Has the power to mitigate secondary causes and alter outcomes if he chooses not to then he bears some responsibility for the outcome. So your claim that the totality of the future is foreknown is the same as saying every decision and outcome is inevitable,which is the same as saying that there is no freewill.

Nincs:Finally, your point about true moral excellence being impossible under the doctrine of predeterminism is based on a misunderstanding. In Christian thought, moral excellence is possible precisely because humans have the freedom to choose between good and evil, even within the scope of God’s omniscient knowledge. God's foreknowledge does not constrain human freedom; rather, it encompasses it, allowing for the genuine exercise of free will and moral responsibility.

Me: JEHOVAH'S Omniscience is not the issue He has the might and the right to create a universe that leaves morally consequential choices undetermined hence not inevitable if our decisions were inevitable from eternity there is no freewill and all of your circular arguments will not make it otherwise.

Nincs:In summary, the notion that God’s foreknowledge negates human free will is a misconception. Traditional Christian doctrine affirms that God’s omniscience and human freedom are compatible, and that God’s foreknowledge does not equate to predetermination. This balance between divine knowledge and human free will is what allows for true moral agency and the potential for moral excellence.

Me:it is simply logical that once an outcome is accurately foreknown it is inevitable from that point if this inevitability precedes the existence of the agent the agent cannot rightly be held responsible for the outcome. Basic logic. 

A scientific basis for hope?

 

NeoDarwinism is dead?

 

Back from the dead?

 

ID keeps on becoming ever more mainstream?

 

Dark oxygen?

More on the search for a third way.

 

On striking the Cambrian jackpot.

 Fossil Friday: Cambrian Explosion Bingo Continues

Gunter Bechly

This Fossil Friday features the weird critter Hallucigenia from the Cambrian Burgess Shale, as we discuss the most recent contribution to the Cambrian Explosion bingo game, which is how I prefer to call the popular exercise in wild speculation and unsubstantiated guesswork among evolutionary biologists to explain the abrupt appearance of animal body plans in the Cambrian Explosion about 535-515 million years ago. Among the many different causes that have been proposed as alleged drivers of the Cambrian Explosion, an increase in oxygen levels represents one of the most popular alternatives (e.g., see Zhang & Cui 2016, He et al. 2019). It was claimed that “oxygen linked with the boom and bust of early animal evolution” (University of Oxford 2019). Even as recently as two years ago, scientists found that there were “pulses of atmosphere oxygenation during the Cambrian radiation of animals” and “oxygen availability was a crucial factor in accelerating the radiation of marine animals” (Jiang et al. 2022).

This just in

Now, a new study by Stockey et el (2024), just published in the journal Nature Geoscience, did not “find evidence for the wholesale oxygenation of Earth’s oceans in the late Neoproterozoic era”, but instead just a “moderate long-term increase”. The authors suggest that this small increase “provides some of the most direct evidence for potential physiological drivers of the Cambrian radiation.” Consequently the press releases and media headlines cheered that scientists found that “a rapid burst of evolution 540 million years ago could have been caused by a small increase in oxygen” (Castañón 2024), and a “small change in Earth’s oxygen levels may have sparked huge evolutionary leap” (University of Southampton 2024), and “life only needed a small amount of oxygen to explode” (Watson 2024). This is quite surprising, as the latter author explicitly admitted that “it’s long been thought that a monumental surge in oxygen fuelled the Cambrian explosion” (Watson 2024). However, suddenly it allegedly was not a monumental surge but just a small long-term increase that made this miracle happen. Hey, no big deal, they just creatively changed the narrative.

Who Cares About Yesterday’s Petty News?

 bet that if scientists were to discover next month that there was no oxygenation in the Cambrian but the exact opposite, they would quickly reverse their just-so-story and claim that it was lower oxygen levels that caused the Cambrian Explosion. If you doubt that distinguished scientists could or would ever be that sloppy and cunning, just look what they did with the event that preceded the Cambrian Explosion in the Ediacaran. Spoiler alert: they did exactly that, which I already discussed at length in a previous article (Bechly 2023a) and podcast (Bechly 2023b). Check it out if you want to dig deeper down this rabbit hole.

References

Bechly G 2023a. Fossil Friday: Seventy Years of Textbook Wisdom on Origin of Multicellular Life Turns Out to Be Wrong. Evolution News September 1, 2023. https://evolutionnews.org/2023/09/fossil-friday-seventy-years-of-textbook-wisdom-on-the-origin-of-multicellular-life-turns-out-to-be-wrong/

Bechly G 2023b. Günter Bechly on Why Seventy Years of Textbook Wisdom Was Wrong. ID the Future episode 1813. https://idthefuture.com/1813/

Castañón L 2024. Revisiting the Cambrian explosion’s spark. Stanford Report July 2, 2024. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/07/revisiting-the-cambrian-explosion-s-spark

He T, Zhu M, Mills BJW et al. 2019. Possible links between extreme oxygen perturbations and the Cambrian radiation of animals. Nature Geoscience 12, 468–474. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0357-z

Jiang L, Zhao M, Shen A, Huang L, Chen D & Cai C 2022. Pulses of atmosphere oxygenation during the Cambrian radiation of animals. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 590: 117565. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2022.117565

Stockey RG, Cole DB, Farrell UC et al. 2024, Sustained increases in atmospheric oxygen and marine productivity in the Neoproterozoic and Palaeozoic eras. Nature Geoscience. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01479-1

University of Oxford 2019. Oxygen linked with the boom and bust of early animal evolution. University of Oxford News & Events May 13, 2019. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-05-13-oxygen-linked-boom-and-bust-early-animal-evolution

University of Southampton 2024. Small change in Earth’s oxygen levels may have sparked huge evolutionary leap. Phys.org July 2, 2024. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-small-earth-oxygen-huge-evolutionary.html

Watson C 2024. Life Only Needed A Small Amount of Oxygen to Explode, Scientists Find. ScienceAlert July 7, 2024. https://www.sciencealert.com/life-only-needed-a-small-amount-of-oxygen-to-explode-scientists-find

Zhang X & Cui L 2016. Oxygen Requirements for the Cambrian Explosion. Journal of Earth Science 27(2), 187–195. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-016-0690-8

On bringing scientific rigor to design detection.

 

Mutation is no friend of Darwinism?

 On Developmental Gene Regulatory Networks, the Scientific Literature Supports Stephen Meyer

Casey Luskin

In  a post yesterday we saw that Stephen Meyer wrote extensively about evo-devo in Darwin’s Doubt, effectively answering biologist Gerd Müller’s preferred evolutionary model for how new body plans arise. If I could boil down Meyer’s arguments to three points, they would be:

Evo-devo focuses on the role of special early-acting mutations in developmental processes to generate new body plans, but over 100 years of mutagenesis experiments show that mutations in genes regulating development are invariably deleterious (or in some cases have only trivial effects). Meyer summarizes: “This generates a dilemma: major changes are not viable; viable changes are not major. In neither case do the kinds of mutation that actually occur produce viable major changes of the kind necessary to build new body plans.”

We see these deleterious effects particularly in experiments on developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs), complex networks of gene-interaction which regulate the expression of genes early in development as an organism’s body plan begins to grow. After reviewing experimental work on dGRNs, Meyer finds that, “These dGRNs cannot vary without causing catastrophic effects to the organism.” 

These experimental results on dGRNS have profound implications for organismal evolution, because if changes to dGRNs are lethal to an embryo, how can they be modified to explain how new body plans evolve? Meyer’s writes in the book: “The system of gene regulation that controls animal-body-plan development is exquisitely integrated, so that significant alterations in these gene regulatory networks inevitably damage or destroy the developing animal. But given this, how could a new animal body plan, and the new dGRNs necessary to produce it, ever evolve gradually via mutation and selection from a preexisting body plan and set of dGRNs?” (Darwin’s Doubt, p. 269)

Gerd Müller is aware that Meyer has talked about dGRNs, because Meyer mentioned them (albeit briefly) on the Joe Rogan podcast last year, and Müller even made a comment in response, saying: “he [Meyer] mentions gene regulatory networks but stops short of making the obvious argument that mutations in these gene regulatory networks you don’t need so many random mutations to create an important change of the phenotype.” But if Meyer is correct then random mutations in dGRNs are lethal to the embryo

The Literature Supports Meyer’s Arguments

Meyer was justified in making these arguments. The work of the late Caltech developmental biologist Eric Davidson, an eminent expert in the field of evo-devo, shows that mutations in genes that affect body plan characteristics (which tend to be expressed early, as the body plan is being put in place) don’t lead to new body plans — they lead to dead embryos. Meyer wrote about Davidson in Darwin’s Doubt, as we saw yesterday. But it’s worth providing some more expansive background in Davidson’s own words:

[T]here is a high penalty to change [in dGRNs], in that interference with the dynamic expression of any one of the genes causes the collapse of expression of all, and the total loss from the system of their contributions to the regulatory state … there is always an observable consequence if a dGRN subcircuit is interrupted. Since these consequences are always catastrophically bad, flexibility is minimal, and since the subcircuits are all interconnected, the whole network partakes of the quality that there is only one way for things to work. And indeed the embryos of each species develop in only one way.

[…]

A few years ago remarkably conserved subcircuits, termed network “kernels” that operate high in the dGRN hierarchy were discovered. … the kernels similarly canalize downstream developmental process in each member of each given clade.

[…]

Evolutionary inflexibility due to highly conserved canalizing dGRN kernels

As discussed above these subcircuits operate at upper levels of dGRN hierarchy so as to affect characters of the body plan that are definitive for upper level taxa, i.e., they control the early stages of just the types of developmental process of which the invariance per taxon constitutes our problem. Since they preclude developmental alternatives, they may act to “booleanize” the evolutionary selective process: either body part specification works the way it is supposed to or the animal fails to generate the body part and does not exist.

ERIC DAVIDSON, “EVOLUTIONARY BIOSCIENCE AS REGULATORY SYSTEMS BIOLOGY,” DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, 357:35-40 (2011)

Or this

Interference with expression of any [genes in the dGRN kernel] by mutation or experimental manipulation has severe effects on the phase of development that they initiate. This accentuates the selective conservation of the whole subcircuit, on pain of developmental catastrophe.

DAVIDSON AND ERWIN. “AN INTEGRATED VIEW OF PRECAMBRIAN EUMETAZOAN EVOLUTION,” COLD SPRING HARBOR SYMPOSIA ON QUANTITATIVE BIOLOGY, 74: 1-16 (2010)

This intolerance of body plan-affecting dGRNs to fundamental perturbations indicates that they could not have evolved by undirected mutations. Many coordinated mutations would be needed to convert one functional dGRN that generates a particular body plan into a different dGRN that generates a different body plan. 

The classic rejoinder

Meyer is also well aware of what evo-devo proponents say in response to these arguments and he has a ready rebuttal. The classic rejoinder from evo-devo proponents is to propose that perhaps in the past somehow dGRNs were more “labile” or “flexible” and easier to evolve. Indeed, Davidson acknowledges that something must have been different when body plans first evolved, which removed this resistance to change:

Deconstructing the evolutionary process by which stem group body plans were stepwise formulated will require us to traverse the conceptual pathway to dGRN elegance, beginning where no modern dGRN provides a model. The basic control features of the initial dGRNs of the Precambrian and early Cambrian must have differed in fundamental respects from those now being unraveled in our laboratories. The earliest ones were likely hierarchically shallow rather than deep, so that in the beginning adaptive selection could operate in a larger portion of their linkages. Furthermore, we can deduce that the outputs of their sub-circuits must have been polyfunctional rather than finely divided and functionally dedicated, as in modern crown group dGRNs….

ERIC DAVIDSON, “EVOLUTIONARY BIOSCIENCE AS REGULATORY SYSTEMS BIOLOGY,” DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, FEBRUARY 2011

Davidson says there that “no modern dGRN provides a model” for how new dGRNs might evolve. Therefore he believes that, when new body plans arose, dGRNs “must have differed in fundamental respects from those now being unraveled in our laboratories.” Davidson is not the only evolutionary scientist to use this form of argument. Paleontologist Charles Marshall said much the same in 2013 when responding in the journal Science to Meyer’s arguments in Darwin’s Doubt regarding dGRNs. Marshall argued that although Meyer is correct to observe that “manipulation of such networks is typically lethal,” this is not a problem for evolution because “GRNs at the time of the emergence of the phyla were not so encumbered.” Indeed, Müller’s intermediary, Forest Valkai, makes a similar (though less eloquently stated) argument in the video attacking Meyer. 

But how does Marshall or Valkai or anyone know that dGRNs were so different in the past? Similarly, how does Davidson know that early dGRNs “must have differed in fundamental respects” from those we observe? Do they know this from experiments and direct observation, or from evolutionary theory itself? The answer is evolution; more precisely, the common descent of the animals. If the animal phyla shared a common ancestor that was itself a developing species, dGRNs of the past must have been more “flexible” or “labile” — totally unlike what we observe today.

But would such a flexible or labile dGRN actually produce a viable animal? We don’t know, because we have no observational evidence. As such, to salvage evo-devo models of evolution from the contrary experimental data, Davidson and Marshall reverse the normal method of historical sciences. Present-day observations are no longer the key to the past. Rather, a theoretical model dictates what must have happened in the past — even if that model contradicts what we know from the evidence. Meyer put it this way in the Epilogue to Darwin’s Doubt

By ignoring this evidence, Marshall and other defenders of evolutionary theory reverse the epistemological priority of the historical scientific method as pioneered by Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, and others. Rather than treating our present experimentally based knowledge as the key to evaluating the plausibility of theories about the past, Marshall uses an evolutionary assumption about what must have happened in the past (transmutation) to justify disregarding experimental observations of what does, and does not, occur in biological systems. The requirements of evolutionary doctrine thus trump our observations about how nature and living organisms actually behave. What we know best from observation takes a backseat to prior beliefs about how life must have arisen. 

What we do know from experience, however, is that large increases in functionally specified information — especially information expressed in an alphabetic or digital form — are always produced by conscious and rational agents. So the best explanation for the explosion of information necessary to produce the Cambrian animals (whether that explosion occurred during or before the Cambrian period) remains intelligent design.

DARWIN’S DOUBT, P. 448

What this means is that although evo-devo has some interesting ideas, evolutionary biology currently lacks a model that is validated by experimental evidence showing that dGRNs — and hence body plans — are mutable and capable of evolving from one form to another.  

More Evo-Devo Problems

But Meyer isn’t done recounting problems with evo-devo-based models of evolution. In Darwin’s Doubt he offers additional reasons why mutations in Hox genes can’t build new body structures:

Third, Hox genes only provide information for building proteins that function as switches that turn other genes on and off. The genes that they regulate contain information for building proteins that form the parts of other structures and organs. The Hox genes themselves, however, do not contain information for building these structural parts. In other words, mutations in Hox genes do not have all the genetic information necessary to generate new tissues, organs, or body plans. 

Nevertheless, Schwartz argues that biologists can explain complex structures such as the eye just by invoking Hox mutations alone. He asserts that “[t]here are homeobox genes for eye formation and that when one of them, the Rx gene in particular, is activated in the right place and at the right time, an individual has an eye.” He also thinks that mutations in Hox genes help arrange organs to form body plans.

In a review of Schwartz’s book, Eörs Szathmáry finds Schwartz’s reasoning deficient. He too notes that Hox genes don’t code for the proteins out of which body parts are made. It follows, he insists, that mutations in Hoxgenes cannot by themselves build new body parts or body plans. As he explains, “Schwartz ignores the fact that homeobox genes are selector genes. They can do nothing if the genes regulated by them are not there.” Though Schwartz says he has “marveled” at “the importance of homeobox genes in helping us to understand the basics of evolutionary change,” Szathmáry doubts that mutations in these genes have much creative power. After asking whether Schwartz succeeds in explaining the origin of new forms of life by appealing to mutations in Hox genes, Szathmáry concludes, “I’m afraid that, in general, he does not.”

Nor, of course, do Hox genes possess the epigenetic information necessary for body-plan formation. Indeed, even in the best of cases mutations in Hox genes still only alter genes. Mutations in Hox genes can only generate new genetic information in DNA. They do not, and cannot, generate epigenetic information.

Instead, epigenetic information and structures actually determine the function of many Hox genes, and not the reverse. This can be seen when the same Hox gene (as determined by nucleotide sequence homology) regulates the development of different anatomical features found in different phyla. For instance, in arthropods the Hox gene Distal-less is required for the normal development of jointed arthropod legs. But in vertebrates a homologous gene (e.g., the Dlx gene in mice) builds a different kind of (nonhomologous) leg. Another homologue of the Distal-less gene in echinoderms regulates the development of tube feet and spines — anatomical features classically thought not to be homologous to arthropod limbs, nor to limbs of tetrapods. In each case, the Distal-less homologues play different roles determined by the higher-level organismal context. And since mutations in Hox genes do not alter higher-level epigenetic contexts, they cannot explain the origin of the novel epigenetic information and structure that establishes the context and that is necessary to building a new animal body plan.

DARWIN’S DOUBT, PP. 320-321

What we see from the passage quoted above, as well as from Meyer’s extensive discussion of evo-devo in Darwin’s Doubt, is that Gerd Müller is far from correct in comparing Meyer to a “gene reductionist” who thinks that only mutations in genes are needed to evolve new types of organisms. In contrast, Meyer is well aware of non-neo-Darwinian models of organismal evolution like evo-devo, which focus on the role of mutations in changing regulatory networks of genes to generate radically new body plans. Meyer also explores how non-genetic or epigenetic information is necessary to generate new body plans, and how evolutionary models seem unable to produce this information as well. 

In sum, Meyer has offered extensive arguments about evo-devo generally, and in particular about dGRNs. He shows that dGRNs can’t change significantly without development shutting down, which means that there is a problem with finding mutations that can suddenly produce large-scale changes to radically alter the body plan of an organism. Since all evolution requires change, this problem applies across the board to all evolutionary claims about the origin of new body plans, not just neo-Darwinian models. The Joe Rogan podcast last year only afforded the opportunity to scratch the surface, but it’s clear that Meyer has a lot to say and that Müller really has not responded to him in any relevant detail

An Invitation to Dialogue

As a fifth and final point, we would love to hear what Professor Müller thinks of all of this. Clearly, Meyer has invested a lot of time and energy into addressing Müller’s field of evo-devo and has developed detailed, careful arguments about the viability of evo-devo-based models. I would welcome a response from Professor Müller. However, I think that our website, Evolution News, would be a better place for dialogue than Professor Müller’s responding indirectly through an angry YouTuber’s channel, with all the personal attacks and other distasteful antics that go with that particular venue. Müller deserves better.

We would be happy to host such a dialogue here at Evolution News, and I therefore invite Professor Müller to send us a robust response to Stephen Meyer’s arguments about evo-devo models of evolution. In that way, real progress can be made in this conversation

Our AI overlords examine Darwinism?

 

Rehabilitating Darwinism?

 

Yet more uncommon descent?

 Fossil Friday: Saber-Toothed Tigers Originated Multiple Times

Gunter Bechly

This Fossil Friday features the saber-toothed tiger Smilodon populator from the Pleistocene of Brazil. Just like dinosaurs and mammoths, saber-toothed tigers are among the most iconic prehistoric animals. The La Brea Tar Pits near Los Angeles are just one of the famous fossil localities where well-preserved skeletons of saber-toothed tigers have been found.

A recent study by scientists from the University of Liege (2024) looked into the origin of this peculiar dental trait. Actually, unlike many other instances of biological novelty saber teeth did not appear abruptly and do not represent a morphological discontinuity, but rather show a continuum of sizes and shapes of the canine teeth in cat-like carnivores. This is not so surprising, as the character of saber teeth is not a complex one, but rather just an instance of allometric differential change of size and shape, which might well be within the realm of gradualist Darwinian mechanisms.

Signs of Design

However, there is another phenomenon concerning saber-toothed predators that may suggest design. The comparison of the different saber-toothed cat-like animals shows that they do not form a clade of most closely related forms, so that “sabertooth morphology stands as a classic case of convergence, manifesting recurrently across various vertebrate groups” (Chatar et al. 2024). These include the Miocene Barbourofelidae, the Nimravidae, which lived from the Eocene to the Miocene in Eurasia and North America, and of course the saber-toothed tiger subfamily Machairodontinae among true felids, which had a wide distribution from the Miocene to the Pleistocene. But saber-tooth morphology is also found in gorgonopsid mammal-like reptiles from the Permian period, the marsupial Thylacosmilidae from the Neogene of South America, as well as the machaeroidine Oxyaenidae from the Eocene of Asia and North America.

Convergence is a ubiquitous phenomenon in biology and a genuine problem for Darwinism, which calls for an alternative explanation. This has been recognized by some mainstream scientists such as the famous paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, who authored several books (Conway Morris 2003, 2015) and scientific articles on this subject. The reuse of the same design in different independent instantiations is a typical design pattern in engineering. The same idea is applied whenever it makes sense, in different instantiations

What Causal Mechanism?

To  me this suggests that the evolution of saber-toothed cats may well have been gradual as suggested by the new study (Chatar et al. 2024; also see University of Liege 2024) but was rather a teleological, goal-directed process than an unguided neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random variations. This is also supported by the fact that the new study showed that “rapid evolutionary rates emerge as key components in the development of a sabertooth morphology in multiple clades” (Chatar et al. 2024) and “saber-toothed species seemed to show faster changes to skull and jaw shapes earlier in their evolutionary history than species with shorter canines — essentially a ‘recipe’ for evolving into saber-toothed feline-like predators” (Chatar quoted in Smaglik 2024). What causal mechanism accelerated the evolutionary speed? According to evolutionists (Chatar et al. 2024), “a rapid burst at the beginning of the nimravid evolutionary history” just happened, and likewise “machairodontine felids rapidly moved away from the most common cat-like morphology.” No explanations offered, but no intelligence allowed either. Maybe scientists should stop shutting their eyes and ears to what nature wants to tell them.

References

Chatar N, Michaud M, Tamagnini D Fischer V 2024. “Evolutionary patterns of cat-like carnivorans unveil drivers of the sabertooth morphology.” Current Biology 34(11), 2460–2473. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.055

Conway Morris S 2003. Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Conway Morris S 2015. The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe Became Self-Aware. Templeton Press, West Conshohocken (PA), 528 pp.

Smaglik P 2024. “Saber Teeth are as Mysterious Evolutionarily as They are Iconic Visually.” Discover Magazine May 17, 2024. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/saber-teeth-are-as-mysterious-evolutionarily-as-they-are-iconic-visually

University de Liege 2024. “How saber-toothed tigers acquired their long upper canine teeth.” Phys.org May 16, 2024. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-saber-toothed-tigers-upper-canine.html

The search for straight answers from trinitarians continues.

 Matthew ch.4:10NIV"Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the LORD your God, and serve him ONLY.’”"

Would rendering sacred service to Jesus alone be sufficient to be in compliance with this command?

If so, would serving either the Father or spirit then be a violation of this command?

Would serving either the Son or Father or Spirit alone be sufficient to be compliant with this instruction?

 If so , having begun serving a particular member of the Trinity would switching allegiance to another member be considered a violation of Matthew ch.4:10,

Would serving the Trinity as a whole alone be enough to obey this command?

If so ,would serving any member of the Trinity be a violation of this command?

The technology of water vs. Darwin

The Properties of Water Point to Intelligent Design

Jonathan McLatchie

In a previous article, I provided an overview of the remarkable coincidences that allow photosynthesis (a process required for the existence of advanced life) to take place. The final example I discussed concerned the transparency of water, facilitating the penetration of visual light through the aqueous cytoplasm of the cell to access the chloroplasts. There are, however, a plethora of other properties of water that appear to be uniquely fit to support life. Here, I shall survey a few of these.

Less Dense in its Solid Form

Unlike almost all other substances, water expands and becomes less dense in its solid form than it is in its liquid form. Ice has an open structure that is sustained by the hydrogen bonds between water molecules. If ice behaved like almost all other substances (a notable exception being the metal gallium, which also expands on freezing), it would sink to the bottom and the oceans would freeze from the bottom up, leading to much of our planet being permanently encased in ice — since the ice beneath the water would be shielded from the warmth of the sun’s rays. Since ice expands upon freezing, however, it insulates the water beneath the surface, keeping it in its liquid form. This property of water is essential to complex life, both marine and terrestrial.

Dissolving Minerals

Water is also a nearly universal solvent, and this property is critical to its role in dissolving minerals from the rocks. Indeed, almost all known chemicals dissolve in water to at least some extent. The solubility of carbon dioxide in water and its reaction with water to yield carbonic acid also promotes chemical reactions with these minerals, increasing their solubility.

Water also has an extremely high surface tension (second only to mercury of any common fluid). As water is drawn into fissures (because of its high surface tension) and expands upon freezing, the surrounding rocks are split open, thereby conferring a greater surface area for chemical weathering.

The Hydrological Cycle

For life on land to thrive, the dissolved minerals also must be deposited on land, which is made possible by the hydrological cycle whereby the water from the oceans evaporates into the atmosphere and returns to the ground as rain or snow. The hydrological cycle is itself made possible by water’s existence in three states (solid, liquid, and gas) in the range of ambient temperatures at the earth’s surface. This ability to exist in three different states at the ambient conditions at the earth’s surface is unique among all known substances. Were it not for this unique property of water, the land masses of our planet would exist as a barren dessert. Michael Denton remarks concerning this remarkable property: “the delivery of water to the land is carried out by and depends upon the properties of water itself. Contrast this with our artifactual designs, where key commodities such as clothes or gasoline must be delivered by extraneous delivery systems such as trucks and trains. Gasoline cannot deliver itself to gas stations nor clothes to clothing stores. But water, by its own intrinsic properties, delivers itself to the land via the hydrological cycle.”1

Ideal for the Circulatory System

Various properties of water also make it an ideal medium for the circulatory system of complex organisms like ourselves. Concerning water’s supreme quality as a solvent, the early 20th-century physiologist Lawrence Henderson remarked, “It cannot be doubted that if the vehicle of the blood were other than water, the dissolved substances would be greatly restricted in variety and in quantity, nor that such restriction must needs be accompanied by a corresponding restriction of life processes.”2

Another characteristic of water is that its viscosity is one of the lowest of any known fluid. The pressure that is needed to pump a fluid increases proportionally with its viscosity. Therefore, if the viscosity of water were significantly increased, it would become prohibitively difficult to pump the blood through the circulatory system. Denton notes that “the head of pressure at the arterial end of a human capillary is thirty-five mm Hg, which is considerable (about one-third that of the systolic pressure in the aorta). This relatively high pressure is necessary to force the blood through the capillaries. This would have to be increased massively if the viscosity of water were several times higher, and is self-evidently impossible and incommensurate with any sort of biological pump.”3 Given that approximately 10 percent of the body’s resting energy is spent on powering the circulatory system, increasing the viscosity of water — to that of olive oil, for example — would present an insurmountable energetic challenge. The viscosity of a fluid is also inversely proportional to its diffusion rate, and so increasing the viscosity of water would have a significant impact on the rate of diffusion from capillaries to the cells of the body.

Specific Heat Capacity, and Evaporative Cooling

Water, furthermore, has one of the highest specific heat capacities of any known fluid. By serving to retard the cooling rate, this property conserves water in its liquid form when it comes into contact with air that is below freezing temperature. Another remarkable feature of water is its evaporative cooling effect. As water evaporates from an object’s surface, the molecules with more kinetic energy escape as a gas, whereas those with lower kinetic energy remain in liquid form. This serves to reduce the surface temperature. The evaporative cooling effect of water is in fact higher than that of any other known molecular liquid — i.e., compounds composed of two or more types of atoms. This characteristic of water is particularly important for warm-blooded organisms when the external temperature is warmer than their core body temperature and thus the excess heat cannot be radiated out into the environment. Instead, excess heat is lost through the evaporative cooling effect of water, maximized by numerous sweat glands on the skin surface.

An Overwhelming Case

For  a much more detailed treatment of this subject, I refer readers to Michael Denton’s book The Wonder of Water: Water’s Profound Fitness for Life on Earth and Mankind

                  As the number of examples of the fine-tuning of nature for advanced life mount, it becomes increasingly difficult to deny what Fred Hoyle called a “common sense interpretation of the facts,” namely, “that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”4 The evidence that our universe was designed with life in mind also raises the intrinsic plausibility (i.e., the prior probability) of intelligent design as an explanation of biological systems.

Notes

Michael Denton, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence (Discovery Institute Press, 2022), 34

Lawrence J. Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment: An Enquiry into the Biological Significance of the Properties of Matter (McMillan, 1913), 116.

Michael Denton, The Wonder of Water: Water’s Profound Fitness for Life on Earth and Mankind (Discovery Institute Press, 2017), 161-162.

Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Engineering and Science, November 1981, 8–12.

More on why you need to get ready to welcome your AI overlords.

 

There's science then there's Science?

 

Life's beginning just keeps getting less and less simple.

 Study Finds Life’s Origin “Required a Surprisingly Short Interval of Geologic Time”

Casey Luskin

An article at ScienceAlert reports, “Gobsmacking Study Finds Life on Earth Emerged 4.2 Billion Years Ago.” They write, “By studying the genomes of organisms that are alive today, scientists have determined that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), the first organism that spawned all the life that exists today on Earth, emerged as early as 4.2 billion years ago.” The article then offers an intriguing point about the rapidity with which life appeared on Earth:

Earth, for context, is around 4.5 billion years old. That means life first emerged when the planet was still practically a newborn.

The technical paper in Nature Ecology and Evolution notes that they used not fossil evidence to arrive at such an early date of life on Earth, but molecular clock techniques. The claim that life existed on Earth at 4.2 billion years ago (also noted as “4.2 Ga”) is consistent with some geological evidence (see below), but life at such an early stage is certainly not expected. Some will surely claim that it’s impossible because the heavy bombardment period which frequently saw the Earth sterilized by impacts had not yet concluded. Here’s some of the best early fossil evidence of life on Earth (Ma means “millions of years” ago):

Potential filamentous microfossils from Canada: >3750 – 4280 Ma (Papineau et al., 2022)

Microfossils from Canada: >3770 Ma (Dodd et al., 2017)

δ13C — Excess light carbon: 3.7 Ga. (Rosing, 1999, Ohtomo et al., 2014)

Stromatolites from Greenland: ~3700 Ma (Nutman et al., 2016)

Stromatolites from Western Australia: 3480 Ma (Van Kranendonk et al. 2008, Walter et al., 1980)

As you can see, most of the early fossil evidence of life on Earth is significantly younger than 4.2 Ga, but the possibility of life at 4.2 Ga is allowed by one study. Despite this potential consistency with some fossil evidence, there are multiple reasons to be skeptical of the article’s methods. 

Genetic and Phenotypic Traits

First, it infers the genetic and phenotypic traits of LUCA by assuming that biological similarity always results from common ancestry — and never from common design. This dubious logic is seen in the opening statement from the technical paper which reads, “The common ancestry of all extant cellular life is evidenced by the universal genetic code, machinery for protein synthesis, shared chirality of the almost-universal set of 20 amino acids and use of ATP as a common energy currency.” It’s true that all life uses those components (although the genetic code is not exactly universal), but this does not provide special evidence for common ancestry because the commonality of these similar features could be explained by common design due to their functional utility. After all, the optimization of the genetic code to minimize the effects of mutations upon amino acid sequences has been cited as potential evidence for intelligent design — showing that there could be good reasons for a designer to re-use the standard genetic code across many organisms.

Second, there are fundamental components of life that show great differences across different types of organisms. For example, the mechanisms of DNA replication and cell division in prokaryotes and eukaryotes are highly distinct. Ribosomes in prokaryotes and eukaryotes have fundamental differences, as one paper explains: “Structures of the bacterial ribosome have provided a framework for understanding universal mechanisms of protein synthesis. However, the eukaryotic ribosome is much larger than it is in bacteria, and its activity is fundamentally different in many key ways.” Many other examples could be given.

Third, the paper uses molecular clock methods to date the timing of LUCA, and molecular clock techniques are problematic for many reasons: they’re highly assumption-dependent and notoriously variant, unreliable, and controversial.

Intriguing Implications

All that said, it’s certainly not impossible that life was already present on Earth at 4.2 Ga. And if it were true it would have intriguing implications. As the study concludes:

The result is a picture of a cellular organism that was prokaryote grade rather than progenotic and that probably existed as a component of an ecosystem, using the WLP for acetogenic growth and carbon fixation. … How evolution proceeded from the origin of life to early communities at the time of LUCA remains an open question, but the inferred age of LUCA (~4.2 Ga) compared with the origin of the Earth and Moon suggests that the process required a surprisingly short interval of geologic time.

This suggests that not only did the origin of life occur very soon after the Earth formed but life diversified into a prokaryotic cellular form very soon as well.

The notion that life appeared on Earth shortly after it became habitable is not new. In the past, experts have said just that. For example:

Stephen Jay Gould: “[W]e are left with very little time between the development of suitable conditions for life on the earth’s surface and the origin of life.” (“An Early Start,” Natural History 87 (February, 1978))

Cyril Ponnamperuma: “[W]e are now thinking, in geochemical terms, of instant life…” (Quoted in Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1981))

Widespread Life in the Universe?

I don’t think Gould or Ponnamperuma would have anticipated life as early as 4.2 Ga. If such a timeframe is correct, however, it is extraordinary indeed. The ScienceAlert article also gets this point, stating, “This implies that it takes relatively little time for a full ecosystem to emerge … It also demonstrates just how quickly an ecosystem was established on early Earth. This suggests that life may be flourishing on Earth-like biospheres elsewhere in the Universe.” The last point — their punchline about astrobiology and the existence of life elsewhere — of course assumes that life on Earth originated naturally in the first place. It also seems to further assume that, under the right conditions, life originates easily. If it has sprung up early and easily on multiple other planets, according to this naturalist way of thinking, shouldn’t it have sprung up multiple times on Earth, too? And yet universal common ancestry denies that this is so. To all appearances, that’s a conundrum for the naturalist.

But a single origin of terrestrial life has not been established by this study. The most that has been demonstrated is that life appeared early in Earth’s history. Given the difficulties surrounding a natural origin of life, a better inference might be to take this evidence of life’s rapid appearance as evidence that it did NOT arise naturally and required intelligent design.

A bottomless pit?

 MDs Support Expanding Assisted Suicide Beyond the Terminally Ill

Wesley J. Smith

The myth that legal assisted suicide is about terminal illness is becoming harder to swallow. Evidence can be found in a recent survey of doctors, published in the Journal of Cutaneous Oncology, which asked doctors this question: : “In addition to adults with terminal illnesses, [which] other groups of patients” should be eligible for MAID?

The answers are disturbing. From the survey:

Adults with intractable psychiatric conditions: 30 percent

Children with terminal conditions: 45 percent

Adults with intractable chronic pain: 55 percent

Adults with late stage dementia: 70 percent

Adults in persistent vegetative state: 80 percent

Majorities of doctors surveyed answered that they would be willing to be present when the deed is done. Here’s the question: “If it were available (or is available), what is your willingness to be present when patients took MAID drugs?” Again, disturbing results, with 61 percent either probably or definitely, yes:

Definitely not: 6 percent

Probably not: 33 percent

Probably yes: 39 percent

Definitely yes: 22 percent

That’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to willingness to do the deed. And no doctors would definitely refuse to “refer for MAID.”

A Terrifying Survey

This survey should terrify anyone who believes in Hippocratic medical values. And it illustrates the impact that constant boosting of assisted suicide in the media and popular culture, utilitarian bioethics training in medicine, and the corrupting cultural paradigm shift in which many believe eliminating suffering should be the prime directive of society, has had on the professional sector that should be most protective of vulnerable patients.

It should be noted that the push is already on to expand eligibility beyond the dying. That is the plan, you know, just as happened in other countries. This survey is but one example of the softening of the ground. Also, the California bill filed but not passed this year that would have opened doctor-prescribed death way beyond the terminally ill.

Indeed, that is the debate we should be having — whether euthanasia should be available to broad categories of suffering people — not the phony-baloney dishonest pretense that assisted suicide/euthanasia is meant over the long haul to be a tightly restricted practice reserved for the dying.

There will be consequences. If this drift continues, we will one dark day end up like Canada, where more than 15,000 patients were killed by doctors in 2023, in a milieu in which cancer patients who couldn’t obtain proper oncology care were euthanized, and where people with disabilities report being pressured by medical personnel and social workers into “choosing” death.

File under "well said" CIX.

"Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination "

Andrew Lang

On separating the wheat from chaff re:science.

 Three Genuine Tells of Junk Science

Evolution News

Capital Research Center reports on non-profit organizations. Managing editor Jon Rodeback offers three tells of junk science: He identifies “settled,” “consensus,” and “scientific study.” On that last topic, he notes,

                                 While scientific studies are essential to scientific research, a single study by itself is far from definitive, and not all scientific studies are created equal. The findings of a single study need to be tested and retested, no matter how promising they seem. In fact, the most promising findings probably need more rigorous testing to ensure that a bias toward a desired outcome did not influence the research.

In addition, the more a study or report is entangled with politics and government funding, the less scientific and less reliable its results will likely be. I have personally witnessed how a government report was vetted by the various offices in a federal department and offending passages were removed or rewritten so as to not cast a particular federal office in a bad light—usually not to correct any inaccuracy in the report, but to obscure inconvenient data and conclusions. 

JON RODEBACK, “THREE TELLS OF JUNK SCIENCE,” CAPITAL RESEARCH CENTER, JUNE 26, 2024

This comes to us hard on the heels of philosopher Massimo Pigliucci’s effort to identify “pseudoscience,” in which he suggested that the solution is to rely on him and on sites he approves of. That’s certainly not an answer for everyone

How Desired Results Are Obtained

Perhaps the main thing to see here is that the many current problems in peer-reviewed science in recent years have diminished the reasons we should simply trust it. Business prof Gary Smith Wrote late last year about the methods used to achieve a desired — but not necessarily natural — result:

One consequence of the pressure to publish is the temptation researchers have to p-hack or HARK. P-hacking occurs when a researcher tortures the data in order to support a desired conclusion. For example, a researcher might look at subsets of the data, discard inconvenient data, or try different model specifications until the desired results are obtained and deemed statistically significant — and therefore publishable. HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results are Known) occurs when a researcher looks for statistical patterns in a set of data without any well-defined purpose in mind beyond trying to find a pattern that is statistically significant — and therefore publishable. P-hacking and HARKing both lead to the publication of dodgy results that are exposed as dodgy when they are tested with fresh data. This failure to replicate undermines the credibility of published research (and the value of publications in assessing scientific accomplishments).

Even worse than p-hacking and HARKing is complete fabrication. Why torture data or rummage through large databases when you can simply make stuff up? An extreme example is SciGen, a random-word generation program created by three MIT graduate students. Hundreds of papers written entirely or in part by SCIgen have been published in reputable journals that claim they only publish papers that pass rigorous peer review.

More sophisticated cons are the “editing services” (aka, “paper mills”) that some researchers use to buy publishable papers or to buy co-authorship on publishable papers. These fake papers are not created by randomly generated words but they may be entirely fabricated or else plagiarized, in whole or in part, from other papers. It has been estimated that thousands of such papers have been published; it is known that hundreds have been retracted after being identified by research-integrity sleuths.

If anything, Smith notes, the problems will likely get worse because chatbots (large language models or LLMs), introduced only about two years ago, can generate rubbish research papers with far greater efficiency and quality than the methods people complained about five years ago.

It’s not an opinion that science is becoming less trustworthy; it’s an everyday fact, if we go by what we are told about the floods of computer-written junk papers and the problems Smith identifies. And the public’s deepening loss of trust in science is also a fact.

Grounds for Hope

Historically, interest and investment in science — and reliance on it — has waxed and waned. It has increased when people see an actual benefit. But if, over time, “studies show” mainly amounts to a publicity campaign for some project approved by powerful interests, with no practical benefits to recommend it, we can expect public trust to decline further. And blaming the public for not believing what’s not believable is hardly a useful response.

Take heart! There have been periods when science stagnated, then underwent major reforms — usually when it was in a rut. Like now, for many disciplines.